Sentient killer war robots could turn on humans and must NOT be ‘unleashed’ on the battlefield, warns top US general
General Paul Selva said humans must have the final say if someone was to die
Senator Peters warned US enemies would not hesitate in using such technology
However, Selva said America should always ‘take our values to war’
In June the Pentagon awarded an $11 million (£8.4 million) contract to build a ‘combined-arms squad’ of human and robotic capabilities
By PHOEBE WESTON
DAILYMAIL.COM
19 July 2017
A top military official has warned lawmakers not to equip the military with autonomous weapons that could go rogue.
The US’s second highest-ranking general said he believed humans must always be the ones to pull the trigger when it came to killing people.
General Paul Selva advocated keeping the ‘ethical rules of war’ – even if the US’s enemies didn’t.
In June the Pentagon awarded an $11 million (£8.4 million) contract to build a ‘combined-arms squad’ of human and robotic capabilities.
Responding to questions from Senator Gary Peters at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday Selva warned against ‘unleash[ing] on humanity a set of robots that we don’t know how to control’.
‘I don’t think it’s reasonable for us to put robots in charge of whether or not we take a human life,’ Selva told the committee.
Senator Peters warned America’s enemies would not hesitate in using such technologies, The Hill writes.
‘Our adversaries often do not to consider the same moral and ethical issues that we consider each and every day,’ Peters said.
However, Selva said America should always ‘take our values to war’ and said it was too dangerous to fit military hardware with autonomous weaponry.
‘There will be a raucous debate in the department about whether or not we take humans out of the decision to take lethal action,’ he said.
It ‘doesn’t mean that we don’t have to address the development of those kinds of technologies and potentially find their vulnerabilities and exploit those vulnerabilities,’ he said.
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